


More Than I Can Take

by Cloudfefe



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Age Difference, Alternate Canon, Alternate Ending, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Canon Compliant, Flashbacks, M/M, Non-Linear Narrative, Not Canon Compliant, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Post-Time Skip, Rare Pairings, Rating May Change, These tags are confusing, but only up to Chapter 14 so also
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-15
Updated: 2020-04-15
Packaged: 2021-03-02 05:28:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,568
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23669926
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cloudfefe/pseuds/Cloudfefe
Summary: After a mysterious stranger arrives in Lestallum, the dawn breaks in Lucis for the first time in eight years. But, when he's spent so long living under perpetual darkness and dedicating himself to the fight against it, will Talcott be able to live a life doing anything else?
Relationships: Iris Amicitia & Noctis Lucis Caelum, Iris Amicitia & Talcott Hester, Noctis Lucis Caelum/Talcott Hester
Kudos: 2





	More Than I Can Take

You arrived at the city gates looking like you’d just crawled out of the woods, and maybe you had. I’d seen that same look before in plenty of other hunters, but only the ones who had just come within an inch of their lives, narrowly escaping death. You, though, showed up completely alone; you weren't even carrying a single weapon. Your clothes were filthy and ripped, skin smeared with soot and slime, face pale beneath the thin trace of hair along your jaw. The look in your eyes was awful, too, almost pitiful: confusion mixed with dread, like you’d just woken up from a horrible dream and weren't yet sure what was real. The idea that anyone could have braved those wastes alone and survived without even a vehicle for protection would have sounded ridiculous to me a few minutes earlier—but there you were, the slope of your shoulders, the curve in your back, the slow way you dragged your boots across the pavement telling me everything I needed to know. I knew the face of every hunter in the city, and I would’ve recognized yours too if you were one of us… still, no regular folk would’ve had reason to carry themselves the way you did, either. I tried to think of where you could have come from—if maybe, unbelievably, you had been tearing through the wilds on foot, fighting off hordes of daemons with your bare hands.

“Never seen him around here before,” I wondered a bit uneasily. I was starting to fear that you were in danger of turning, even though I couldn’t see any tar-like welts or black mist hanging on your body. I must’ve said it aloud, though, because Miss Iris turned her gaze across the lot to where I held my attention. She had been helping me with that day’s delivery, against my urging that she take some more time off, insisting instead that doing something useful would get her out of her own head. I wasn’t going to press her on it; it had only been a week, after all.

When she recognized you, she screamed your name so loudly it alerted the entire watch.

She sprinted across the lot, baton clattering to the ground behind her, and I gaped after her as she threw her arms around your neck with such force she nearly toppled you to the ground. You broke into a laugh, then: so vibrant and genuine that it completely transformed your face, enough to make you look like an entirely different person. Any worry I had that you were infected dissipated immediately. Your smile was warm enough to reach all the way into my own chest.

The two of you spoke indistinctly for a while, you in a low voice I couldn’t make out and her through overjoyed sobs and enthusiastic chatter. I couldn’t take my eyes off you the whole time. Faces came so easily to me, and there was no way I wouldn’t have remembered yours, with how naturally and intimately the two of you conversed—like you had known each other for years. Her hands were all over you: grabbing your shoulders, clutching your face, clinging to your torso, as if she thought she needed to have them there to keep you from disappearing. She tried to rub a spot of dirt off your right cheek, and you scrunched up your face at her, swatting her hand away. You both laughed again. You looked… so  _ relieved _ , in that moment, like you yourself had seen the sun after all these years.

Something in you started to stiffen the more you spoke with her, though. At one point, you met her gaze, jaw setting into a hard, miserable line. It made you look even more haggard than before.

You asked her one last question—I’m not sure how I could tell that’s what it was—and waited grimly for her answer. I could feel how heavily the air hung around you from where I stood.

Finally, Miss Iris shook her head. All the color drained from your face.

When she returned, she asked me, through a breaking voice and tear-filled eyes, if she could borrow my truck for a while. Just to go to Caem, she explained—to take care of a few things. Bewildered, I nodded. I wondered what this had to do with her brother…  _ if _ it had anything to do with him. Clearly, though, it wasn't the time for questions; I decided it would be best if I didn't ask. Instead, I handed over the keys without another word.

We locked eyes only once, right after Miss Iris pulled around with my truck and just before you climbed into the passenger’s seat. You looked like you were being carted off to your own execution. The doors slammed shut, and the two of you pulled out of the lot.

\--

The dawn broke a few hours later.

I remember squinting at the horizon from my vantage point on the hospital rooftop, trying to make sense of the searing white line cutting over the distant hills. The sky had started to bruise red—vivid, almost apocalyptic. Clamor had risen in the streets below me: people shouting across the alleyways, running to embrace each other, crying out in everything from shock to elation to utter disbelief. I could feel without a doubt you were connected to it; you'd seemed to have materialized out of nowhere, after years of seemingly endless plague and dark… just like the sun that was now piercing its way through the trees.

After eight years, I’d learned to accept that I would never see it again. There were children in the city, in those days, who were so young they couldn't have even known what daylight was supposed to look like.

Not until now, anyway. Not until after you appeared.

Miss Iris had called for a public address, so I pushed my way into the main square, through the sea of people already eager to hear what she had to say. The entire city was in attendance—the air around them was invigorating, charged with anticipation. The sky had taken on more color, now, gilded blue serving as a backdrop for wispy, pink-stained clouds; the two of you stood on one of the high balconies, forcing us to tilt our heads toward it in order to see you. When she stepped back to give you the floor, a murmur fell over the crowd, and everyone craned their necks to get a better view.

You looked completely different from that man who had first stumbled up to the gate. Those ripped clothes had been replaced with your full raiment, complete with black mantle and thin, silver crown. You’d managed to get cleaned up, as well; your hair shone in the warm light of the sunrise. You certainly looked regal, dignified—solemn, like a gust of wind would have scattered you into a pile of ash. Nothing like you had when I watched you laughing so easily a few hours earlier.

The rumors had started to spread before the two of you even returned to the city, and when you stepped up to speak, they resurfaced among the mass of people like water coming to a boil.  _ That  _ was the one, they whispered to each other—shielding their faces from the sun’s glaring rays to squint up at your silhouette—who had finally dispelled the darkness, fulfilled some sort of prophecy that I had been taught too long ago for me to properly remember. But the grave set to your face, during what should have by all accounts been the celebration of your victory, told me something else.

I remembered the way you steeled yourself when you left for Caem. I remembered the wild look in your eyes when you first dragged your feet to the gate. I couldn't figure out how to fathom any of it.

Your voice boomed over the mass of people, swelling and crashing over it in waves. You spoke of tragedy and death, loss and pain: wounds that might not ever fully heal. You paid tribute to those who were no longer with us, who sacrificed their lives so that others might have a chance at surviving. I felt my stomach lurch at that, and I heard your voice crack a bit around the edges, too, almost imperceptibly; you kept your composure. You spoke of triumph and hope and working together for the dawn of a new day, but your eyes were mournful and bleak, unmoved by your own words. Like they meant nothing. Like you’d lost. Like you were… atoning for something.

You’d looked how I’d felt when I first came to Lestallum.

The crowd erupted around me, with praises for and pledges of fealty to the man they were now calling their king. ‘King’—the word still sounded so implausible, so far from reality. I looked up at you, standing on that balcony before all your new subjects. You looked like you would have given anything to shrink away, until none of them remembered that you had even come.

I looked up at you on that balcony, standing as tall and as proud as should be expected of a king. I thought I understood how low and how small you must have really felt.

At that moment, I wondered how different we could have really been.

**Author's Note:**

> Ugh, god I had been working on this for so long with no results when I pounded this out out of nowhere one night and finally saw a real story start taking shape. I'm going to post this first chapter and stop tweaking it before I actually lose my mind.  
>   
> This work has a solid outline, but the number of chapters may change. Appropriate content warnings will be added to notes at the beginning of each chapter, if applicable.  
>   
> If you would like to beta for future chapters, please let me know (this is a cry for help).


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